City hot on cold cases

Schenectady stepping up probe of unsolved murders with help from State Police

By Paul Nelson Staff writer

Published 1:00 am, Monday, July 20, 2009

SCHENECTADY — Last month, when the city had three homicides in two weeks, the Police Department went back to teaming up with State Police on murder cases.

The decision by city police brass helped allay some of the Schenectady County district attorney's concerns about overburdened detectives balancing the need to deal with daily felonies while chasing down leads on 21 unsolved homicides, some dating back more than a decade.

"I was concerned because I wasn't seeing the same level of involvement, the same level of effort and the same level of closure," District Attorney Robert Carney said. "I think recent changes are heartening."

While most of the victims died in gun violence, six people — five of them children — died in what authorities are investigating as an arson fire at a Division Street home in 2005, according to city police Capt. Pete Frisoni. He said the oldest unsolved case is the 1993 death of Eddy Dan, a vacuum cleaner salesman found bound and gagged in his Chrisler Avenue apartment.

The Electric City with roughly 61,500 people has a 166-member police department. Niagara Falls, a community of about 55,000 people, has 10 unsolved homicides since 1988, according to city police Lt. William Thomson. He said his 120-member department can "usually get cooperation" from people in this because many of them are related.

In Schenectady, 10 officers work in the detective division, which handles homicides, while seven investigators in the youth aid division assist their colleagues when there is a heavy caseload, Frisoni said. Asked if the detective division is undermanned, Frisoni acknowledged he could always use more officers, especially because detectives are sometimes handling two or three murders because homicides often occur close together, as happened in June.

He stressed killings are always a priority in the department and investigators follow up on all leads.

"Homicides are very involved, and in some cases we've had hundreds of leads," he said. "If you have adequate resources, those leads can be checked out more quickly. It's not the time period as much as how much information is coming in that we have to chase down."

Even with promising leads, Frisoni said police need the public's help.

"Several of those cases are solvable, but because of a lack of cooperation and a lack of information, they are open," he said.

Some witnesses lie or tell half-truths, Frisoni said. If they were more forthcoming, police could close some of the department's cold cases. In some instances, people break their silence only when they are arrested and use what they know as leverage to secure a lesser charge or sentence.

Police Chief Mark Chaires said a variety of factors make some cases difficult but that people will talk if they really care about their neighborhood.

"It's really impacting their quality of life," he said. ''If they don't cooperate, what are their communities going to look like four or five years from now?"

Chaires said losing detectives like Jack Sims, who recently retired and took a job with Carney's office, means that the younger investigators ''have to step up" and apply what they've learned from the veterans. He doesn't believe that the personnel changes have hurt the detective division, whose members have an average of between 15 to 20 years experience.

Paul Nelson can be reached at 454-5347 or by e-mail at pnelson@timesunion.com